The Employment Security Department is reporting that it paid hundreds of millions of dollars in unemployment benefits to fraudsters.

The false unemployment claims were made with tens of thousands of identities stolen from Washingtonians.

And now, the Washington residents who are out of work and filing legitimate unemployment claims will have to wait a bit longer to see those benefits.

“As we got a better sense of the scale and scope of the fraud that was being perpetrated, it was necessary for us to pause payments to be able to put additional measures in place that would help fraudulent claims from being paid out,” said Nick Demerice, director of public affairs for Employment Security.